This invention relates generally to driver and vehicle journey facilitation systems and particularly to such systems as have a wireless communications facility.
Wireless communications are known. Wireless systems making use of frequency reuse, such as cellular systems, are virtually ubiquitous and dispatch services are also well integrated and dispersed. Both are key components of modern infrastructure.
Now, at least one group seeks to define a new wireless communications service to specifically facilitate terrestrial-based vehicular journeys (particularly for automobiles and trucks). Presently known as dedicated short range communications (DSRC), the Federal Communications Commission in the United States has presently at least tentatively identified spectrum that can be used for such journey-related information. The American Society for Testing and Materials presently acts as a standards development group to define such a communications service to support provision of journey-related information to vehicular users. At present, the over-the-air interface has not been defined (though at least two wireless local area network systemsxe2x80x94the I.E.E.E.#802.11A and Motorola""s control channel based Freespace systemxe2x80x94have been proposed and are being considered). This group has, however, made considerable progress towards defining the services that the service will support. In particular, such a journey-related information provision system should ultimately provide roadside information and corresponding vehicle-to-vehicle communications to support both public safety and private requirements (depending upon the application transmission range will likely vary from fifteen meters to three hundred meters).
As an example of public safety services, such a roadside information system can be expected to support:
Traffic count (for example, determining the number of vehicles that traverse an intersection over a given period of time);
Traffic movement information;
Toll collection;
In-vehicle signage (for example, presenting xe2x80x9cstopxe2x80x9d information within the cockpit of a vehicle as the vehicle approaches a stop sign);
Road condition warnings;
Intersection collision avoidance (including highway/rail intersections);
Vehicle-to-vehicle information (for example, stopped vehicle or slowing vehicle information);
Rollover warnings;
Low bridge warnings;
Boarder clearance facilitation;
On-board safety data transfer;
Driver""s daily log;
Vehicle safety inspection information; and
Emergency vehicle traffic signal preemption.
Examples of private requirements include;
Premises access control;
Gasoline payment;
Drive-through retail payment;
Parking lot payments;
Various vehicular related data transfers (for example, diagnostic data, repair service record data, vehicular computer program updates, map information, and user content such as music);
Rental car processing;
Fleet management;
Locomotive fuel monitoring; and
Locomotive data transfer.
As such communications systems that serve to support provision of journey-related information to a user (where the xe2x80x9cuserxe2x80x9d may be a driver or passenger of a vehicle and/or the vehicle itself) are constructed and placed in service, coverage will likely not be universal. Certainly at the outset coverage cannot likely be complete. Consequently travelers will journey in and out of geographic zones that do not support the service. These zones may be small or large and these zones may represent temporary or ongoing conditions. As users come to rely upon such services for safety, convenience, comfort, and control, however, encountering such geographic zones during a journey may pose troubling and even dangerous circumstances for the user.
A need therefor exists for a way to detect the present and/or future likelihood that such services are not or will not be available within a particular geographic area.
A need therefor exists far away to alert a user when such services are not presently and/or imminently available to a given user.
A need therefor exists for a way to substitute, at least to some degree, for the services that are missing in such a geographic zone.